FoxNews.com has a story about a 20-year-old from New York who drove to Spokane, WA to get arrested for stalking a 15-year-old girl he met while playing Halo. (Recon #54, who brought us the story, believes it’s unfair that Halo is blamed, rather than Xbox Live… but really, the problem is with the guy who thought it was a good idea to drive 3000 miles to harass an underaged teen.) Girls on Live sure have it rough!(Louis Wu 16:31:52 UTC)

Apparently, according to this post at UsedShoe.com, if you buy Halo 3 at a brick-and-mortar F.Y.E. store before January 16, you’ll get a mail-in rebate on your receipt; complete it, and get $40 (of your $60 purchase) back. Halo 3 for $20 – not a bad price! (Louis Wu 16:20:44 UTC)

Mariachi is getting married this week – and his friends threw him a Halo-themed bachelor party for him. No hot chicks in cakes… but custom medals, and appropriate lessons. Nice! Thanks, JeSteR 343.(Louis Wu 16:15:49 UTC)

SPU7N1K stopped by with pictures of a REAL Recon helmet, created by Belakor of the 405th forums. You might not be able to get Bungie’s… but this one’s actually cooler.(Louis Wu 16:14:04 UTC)

Sarccastic Gamer has been counting down the top 100 Gaming Moments of 2007; the leaked ending to Halo 3 came in at #64, and “Halo 3 Heart Attack”, the chaos that ensued when the Crackdown route didn’t let folks in as expected to the Halo 3 Beta that first day, just made #25. We’ll keep an eye on the list, in case more Halo moments make the top 20!(Louis Wu 16:11:57 UTC)

Gametrailers Game of the Year Awards continue – Halo takes Best First Person Shooter from a field that included Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Metroid Prime 3, and The Orange Box. Thanks, Mattus.(Louis Wu 21:51:12 UTC)

Some people might look at a recently-posted video from FooFoo and wonder why… others will see the value in sofa launching without any prompting. Which group are you in?(Louis Wu 21:49:03 UTC)

A representative from AKQA, the agency behind the IRIS ARG and the Halo 3 Believe ads, stopped by our forum to point out that the Believe website is up for Flash Website of the Year from the Favorite Website Awards. Go help ’em win! (He also wanted to thank the community for its involvement in the games – so pat yourselves on the back!)(Louis Wu 21:46:44 UTC)

Sigafoos sent word of The Riot 80, an hour-long discussion of their Community Aawards nominations. There’s still a little community news, but the focus is on the awards. Go listen! (Louis Wu 21:42:05 UTC)

Avi Levin let us know that Gamespot has posted their Editor’s Choices for their Game of the Year Awards, and Halo didn’t win anything it was nominated for. (That includes Multiplayer, Shooter, 360 Game, and GotY, as well as the Bungie Microsoft split for Biggest News.) Ouch!(Louis Wu 21:40:05 UTC)

Z let us know about a Halo 3 gameplay montage from Luck is Taken – it’s about seven and a half minutes long, and weighs in at 171 mb. Plenty of sticks and snipes – but lots of other weapons too. Take a look.(Louis Wu 21:30:55 UTC)

A pro gamer who was awarded Recon armor by Bungie for a pretty cool suicide he filmed has had his account stolen by a jerk who wanted the armor. The story on Joystiq suggests his account was ‘hacked’, but if you read the thread on Team vBi’s forum, it becomes clear that the account was stolen by someone who called up Xbox Customer Support and somehow convinced the person on the other end of the phone that the account belonged to him, and that certain info needed changing. Having had my own personal run-ins with tech support over there, I find this totally believable – and I’m curious to see how this turns out. Hopefully, the upshot will be better phone security for Xbox Live accounts down the road.(Louis Wu 21:24:37 UTC)

AnTi PRO, from Arm The Flag, let us knwo about a trailer for their upcoming movie, ‘Epic Machinima’. I’ts a spoof of every overdone idea in machinima, all in one place. You can find download links (and comment on the project) in this HaloGrid thread.(Louis Wu 21:14:55 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has a whole bunch of goodies to show you; starting off, there’s a Master Chief helmet created in Forge. (I thought I’d seen this before – but I can’t find it in our news.) Then, she mentions an auction for an item she does NOT want you bidding on – because she wants it. Finally, she points out an auction for a custom Halo 3 Guitar Hero III for the 360. Nice!(Louis Wu 21:10:22 UTC)

AJay put together a Halo 3 stat sig generator – swing by and make one for yourself!(Louis Wu 12:00:54 UTC)

Bryn ‘ofthehi77’ Casey let us know that he’d created four new Halo images – we’ve added them to his Gallery section here. Check out Arbiter, Sierra117, Tunnel, and Feet First into Hell. Wow – these would look wonderful on your wall! (Louis Wu 11:49:41 UTC)

Today’s episode of Another Halo Comic Strip isn’t NSFW… but it’s close. Still… I like it. And it WAS a very good year. That’s it for AHCS until 2008!(Louis Wu 11:45:40 UTC)